Labor organization blogs

Vous êtes sur le site officiel des Travailleurs Industriels du Monde. Ici vous trouverez à peu près tout ce dont vous avez besoin pour rejoindre l'IWW et commencer à organiser vos lieux de travail et construire un grand syndicat au sein de votre communauté. La plupart des informations contenues ici traitent des Etats-unis et du Canada, mais nous avons aussi des liens vers d.autres sites IWW gérés ailleurs.

L'IWW est une organisation syndicale pour tous les travailleurs, un syndicat dédié à l'organisation des travailleurs sur leur lieu de travail, dans leurs industries et leurs communautés. Les membres des IWW organisent les travailleurs pour obtenir de meilleures conditions aujourd.hui et construisent pour demain un monde économique démocratique. Nous voulons que nos entreprises fonctionnent au profit des ouvriers et des communautés plutôt que pour une poignée de patrons et leur exécutif.

Nous sommes les Travailleurs Industriels du Monde parce que nous nous organisons industriellement. Ceci signifie que nous organisons tous les travailleurs produisant les mêmes biens ou fournissant les mêmes services dans un syndicat, plutôt que de les diviser par secteurs d.activité, ainsi nous pouvons mettre en commun notre force et faire triompher nos revendications ensemble. Depuis que l'IWW a été fondé en 1905, nous avons apporté des contributions significatives aux combats des travailleurs à travers le monde et nous sommes fiers de notre tradition visant à nous organiser indépendamment de critères sexuels, ethniques et raciaux bien avant que de telles méthodes soient courantes.

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That is what the far right-wing Family Research Council asks about Kevin Jennings, founder and former executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.

Well, since you asked, absolutely yes.

GLSEN has done admirable work in diversity education, and Jennings has been nominated as the new Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for the Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, so the Family Research Council is out for blood. Jennings spoke at last spring’s Representative Assembly of NYSUT, and gave an absolutely dynamite speech.

If you agree that he is fit to guide your children, you might want to sign the GLSEN petition in support of Jennings.

Randi Weingarten appeared on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” on Monday morning and spoke about the possible sunset of mayoral control (now a reality), among other topics.

[If the embedded audio player is not working, you can listen to the segment here.]

Headlines:

• UE Workers in Chicago Facing Another Plant Closure
• PIDC Hunger Strike Leader Assaulted & Threatened
• Indigenous People Massacred in Peru

Features:

• Recession: Time To Organize
• Special: Wobbly Art & Poetry
• Post-Fordism in Northern Ireland

Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

[Editor's note: This "What Matters Most" column appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, June 28.]

Last week, I told New York City educators that I was stepping down from the best job I have ever had, leading the United Federation of Teachers. Last summer, after being elected president of my national union, l knew this day would eventually come but it was still hard. Why? Because there is always more to be done.

One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things. We have the most diverse student population in the world — 1.1 million kids from every kind of household, economic background and skill level. More than 150 languages are spoken in our schools. The 80 thousand teachers in our schools make up the best teaching force in the country in one of the toughest, most watched school systems there is.

Education is now front and center in our city’s agenda and will increasingly take center stage at the national level. Policy makers are beginning to understand what leaders like President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg did long ago — that we can’t have a strong economy, a strong city or a thriving nation without public schools that work for all kids. Governors are stepping up, as well. In response to our call for national standards, 46 members of the National Governor’s Association recently came out in support of common standards for our schools.

This focus raises the stakes on all of us — we all must perform at the top of our game to ensure that we are building a better future for our children. And a key ingredient to ensuring that our schools work as we continue to shape education policy is teacher voice. Teachers must be respected, treated as the professionals they are, listened to and cultivated for their expertise. For far too long, the debate around education was divided into camps where the so called “reformers” mistakenly and simplistically blamed teachers and their unions for all that ails the schools. Fortunately, led by the example of President Obama, as well as the multiple advances the UFT negotiated with Mayor Bloomberg, including ways to recruit, support, retain and reward great teachers and schools these false categories are beginning to dissolve and teachers and their unions are being appropriately looked to as a key part of the solution.

Teachers are also a vital part of the link between the community and the school, and the work we have done in that regard in New York City is the accomplishment of which I am most proud. Parent and community engagement in the schools cannot be manufactured by a think tank or dictated by a superintendent. It has to happen person by person and it takes time. And it doesn’t happen without teachers and principals fostering those connections.

If any link in the public education chain doesn’t include a teacher’s perspective — from idea generation to policy implementation to parental and community engagement — the chain breaks down. As educators, we know that schools with the most collaborative work environments thrive. We need to expand that spirit to the policy development level as well — sharing ideas, strategies and experiences so that the policies we develop for our children are put through a rigorous, real world process to determine their effectiveness.

When I started this job, I wanted to make every school a place where educators wanted to work and that parents wanted to send their kids. We aren’t there yet, but we’ve made a great deal of progress. It’s been an honor to serve New Yorkers and to represent their teachers. I will carry the lessons I learned from you with me to Washington to work nationally to ensure that every child in America has the opportunity to have a great public education.

About a year ago, a task force released a report calling for a Broader, Bolder Approach to education. Broader Bolder’s approach was exactly what its name implied, a fuller and more audacious look at what it would take to raise truly educated children all across America. Among its recommendations were a richer curriculum, investments in pre-kindergarten and health services, and more attention to the time kids spend outside of school.

The signers and co-chairs of the report included the current Secretary of Education (Arne Duncan), and two Assistant Secretaries of Education from the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations (Tom Payzant and Susan Neuman). Just as important were the major national figures in education who are more familiar to New York teachers, including Diane Ravitch, Pedro Noguera, and Rudy Crew.

At the time, the report generated quite a bit of press and more than a little controversy, especially since BBA was calling for a look at all the outcomes we want for children, as opposed to the politically simple focus on math and reading scores that has fetishized our classrooms – the test question dissections, the introduction of test prep as a “genre study,” and the promotions, graduations, and cash rewards for children based on tests, tests, tests. Since BBA was asking for something more inspiring than that, some people saw the report as a repudiation of testing, a backing away from accountability.

Now, however, BBA has come out with School Accountability — A Broader, Bolder Approach, which offers a framework for how school accountability policies can be improved to measure the aspects of education recommended by the original task force. (Full disclosure: I was a member of BBA’s accountability committee.) Taken together, BBA’s recommendations read as a kind of remedy to the distortions created under the current system. Once again, the committee included Tom Payzant, Susan Neuman, Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, and Pedro Noguera, but there were new signers as well, like Christopher Cross who serves as a consultant to the Broad Foundation and is a senior fellow with the Center for Education Policy. This is a diverse group, but the group spoke with one voice when it came to making much-needed changes to accountability policies across the states. Among the recommendations:

• An expanded role for a low-stakes NAEP tests in more subjects and skills;
• A federal system to coordinate and disseminate data regarding all the gaps that influence student achievement (How healthy are our children ? How much do they know about history and art?);
• Better testing and in-school evaluations (“inspectorates”) carried out by independent professionals who can determine how well the school is addressing the full range of underlying factors that influence student achievement, including factors like safety and supports. These more sophisticated evaluations might occur every three years (BBA calls for flexibility and experimentation), and must be monitored and revised as the models develop.

Accountability will probably be part of school cultures for a long time to come. And in an accountability culture, schools tend to focus only on those things for which they are held accountable. Since that is the case, we need to put into the equation the things that teachers know will make a difference. BBA offers one way to do that, and a way to change the face of education in our schools.

“School’s Out” by Alice Cooper

[Editor's note: Just Miss is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]

There is dirt under my fingernails. Always. I can’t ever seem to get them clean, no matter how many times I use the pink industrial soap in the faculty bathroom, or the school-issued hand sanitizer.

Can I recall the days when I used to have clean fingernails? Regular manicures? Hmm….. nope. I suddenly feel for the art teachers of the world. Their manicures were doomed from Day One.

I have very nice fingernails. Much longer and more elegant than the rest of me. I have a friend who is a hand and foot model, and I’ve often marveled at her life. She travels the world, having her extremities photographed, holding various products. Fascinating… But she also has to wear black gloves when she’s at the beach or in the sun to keep her skin soft and fair. I don’t envy that. It’s more than a little comical, and it just reminds you of that “Seinfeld” episode, doesn’t it?

Chalk dust, marker eraser from the white board, who knows what else is under there. If I wore black gloves all day I wonder if anyone would notice…

And yet — my fingernails are a reflection of me. They’re haggard and worn. They need filing and polish, maybe a nice soak and some pampering. THEY NEED REST. When I look down at them, I smile. Only one teaching day left and I’m… (dare I say it?) FREE.

June in a New York City classroom has been no picnic, like the worst that’s thrown at you just before vacation to make you appreciate your vacation that much more. Water fights, food fights, you name it. But soon the hallways will be beautifully quiet. No more alarms at 6 a.m. — unless I’d heading out for an early beach day. No more whining children — unless they are related to me. No more keeping up with the latest vernacular — “Dead ass” translates as: “Seriously!”; “That’s my neck” translates as: “Wait, I messed up, don’t hit me”; and being “tight,” depending how it is being used, can mean either a good thing (”I like that haircut, it’s tight.”) OR being all upset about nothing (”Why you gettin’ TIGHT Miss??”).

In a day I could spend HOURS in the manicure chair, not giving a damn what the words the manicurists are using, then HOURS in my garden messing up my manicure…

One day left, my little fingers. We can do this. Dead ass.

On Monday the city learned that its on-time graduation rate rose to 66 percent, its highest level in at least 20 years. By the more stringent state counting method. the city graduated 56.4 percent of its Class of 2008 on time, a 10-year high at least. Either way, it’s pretty significant.

By now, the good news bandwagon has actually gotten a little repetitive.  (And the Mayor’s use of test score and graduation rate gains to flay opponents of mayoral control has gotten a little much.)  But the graduation rates are based on four years of coursework as well as five exit exams, so those gains should truly be celebrated.

Without trying to rain on the parades, though, future graduation rates are likely to go down. Over the next three years, the state will phase out “local” diplomas, awarded to students who pass Regents exams with a 55-64, instead of a 65 or better. More than a quarter (28 percent) of the Class of 2008 graduates received local diplomas, and this was not much changed from the year before. So absent some amendment to the policy, we could see state-calculated graduation rates closer to 40 percent in three years, when the local diploma option is up. The 15 or 16 percent of each class (graduates and non-graduates) with local diplomas, who have boosted the city’s graduation rate comfortably past the 50 percent mark for the last two years, are going to disappear.

The Center for New York City Affairs recently highlighted this coming trainwreck in its report, “The New Marketplace.” Using 2007 data, authors Kim Nauer and Clara Hemphill showed that “(I)f students had been required to obtain a Regents diploma in 2007, only 34 schools [out of 269] would have had a graduation rate of 75 percent or higher.” The situation was especially dire in small high schools, they said, where 26 percent of the class (graduates and non-graduates) got local diplomas, compared with 17 percent in the large high schools.

Some groups will be hit harder than others. The new data, for the Class of 2008, show that more than a third (35 percent each) of black and Hispanic graduates got local diplomas. Of the 22.5 percent of students with disabilities who graduated on time, two-thirds got local diplomas. And of the 35.8 percent of English Language Learners who graduated with their class in 2008, more than half did it with local diplomas.

Meanwhile, the Board of Regents, under its tough new Chancellor Merryl Tisch, is not likely to “dumb down” state tests. She recently complained the Grade 3-8 math test was “too easy.” But the Regents are considering whether to extend the phase-out of local diplomas. They are also thinking about using a five-year graduation rate for NCLB accountability purposes. That could give a substantial boost to the most challenged students, and the U.S. Department of Education has suggested that such a change might be approved.

Meanwhile, be prepared for footnotes and asterisks galore if the local diplomas no longer count. The DOE will fall all over itself to clarify any charts or graphs that show an education indicator going downhill. It’s just not in their playbook.

It’s been sympathetically and properly noted that police officers are technically on duty 24/7. That observation should be made with equal soundness about teachers. We, too, may be off the clock but our time is never our own, try as we may to “psych” ourselves into “vacation mode.” That’s the nature of our profession. Consciously or not we are always processing our experiences and devising means to integrate them ingeniously into a lesson, regardless of subject area.

It is a pernicious fallacy, mouthed by teacher-bashers for whom no dosage of truth serum will work, that teachers go into intellectual hibernation, especially during the summer, and suspend the expenditure of energies that don’t involve self-mollycoddling until the autumn leaves turn red.

Teachers are generally the most unselfish and scrupulous professionals and when it comes to being heroes, don’t take the back seat to anyone, including those in uniform. (And we get tickets for violating the traffic codes and must pay our diner bills in full!)

So throw down your burden, now that July is almost upon us, thrust all self-doubt out the window as you pat yourself on the back (don’t do that while you’re driving), indulge whatever guilty pleasures work for you and don’t forget the sunscreen.

Today, the nation’s preeminent charter school organization, Green Dot Public Schools, and its largest teacher union local, the United Federation of Teachers, signed an innovative and pioneering collective bargaining agreement for Green Dot’s New York City charter school. The contract was approved by the Board of Trustees of the Green Dot school on Monday, and was ratified by the UFT Chapter today.

The 29 page agreement breaks vital new ground, and not simply because it brings together leading forces in the ranks of the charter school movement and teacher unionism. Just as importantly, the contract embodies a new model of labor relations in education, based on a disarmingly simple proposition: that a school which respects, nurtures and supports teacher professionalism in all of its work will provide the best education for students.

“At its core, this contract is about shared expectations and shared responsibility. Our educators are being asked to take a leading role in the success of their school, and they’re being provided with the professional supports needed to help make that success possible,” said UFT and AFT President Randi Weingarten.

“Green Dot has had great success in working with the unionized teaching force in Los Angeles and we are looking forward to continuing our partnership with Randi Weingarten and the United Federation of Teachers in New York,” said Green Dot Public Schools founder and Chairman, Steve Barr.

Here are the main features of the agreement:

• A Just Cause Standard for discipline and dismissal, in effect from the first day of employment for teachers and guidance counselors, and a system of Progressive Discipline.

• Due Process, with a four step grievance process that culminates in binding arbitration.

• Professional Mediation, with a broad scope that allows it to be used to address any school based issue or disagreement.

• Educators work an un-timed “Professional Day” which requires that they be on-site during the student day, staff meetings, professional development, and preparation time. The school year has a base of the same number of days as the annual NYC Department of Education calendar, with eight additional staff development days. A school Calendar and Programming Committee, with the majority of its members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members, has the authority to reconfigure the NYC Department of Education school calendar, with the ratification of the majority of the staff.

• Reflecting the longer “professional day” and work year, educators are paid a 14% Pay Premium above the NYC Department of Education salary scale, with a top salary of over $114,000. 4% of the school’s budget is reserved for Stipends, paid to educators for services beyond their usual responsibilities. A Stipend Committee, with the majority of its members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members, makes all the decisions on how that stipend budget is spent.

• The contract sets a Maximum Class Size of 30 and a maximum student-teacher ratio for the entire school of 20 to 1. For the first time in any educational collective bargaining agreement, the contract sets a Maximum Student Load for teachers of 130 students. [As a point of comparison, a NYC Department of Education high school teacher in the main academic subjects could see as many as 170 students every day.]

• To provide for Teacher Voice and Leadership, the contract establishes a number of school committees, with the majority of their members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members. In addition to the already cited Stipend and Calendar and Programming Committees, there are Leadership, Professional Development, Hiring and Budget Committees.

• Professional Evaluation: Teachers and guidance counselors will be evaluated based on Green Dot’s system for professional evaluation and support which includes the development of personal goals, the evaluation of progress against those goals, and the development of up to two intervention/corrective action plans before disciplinary action can be taken.  The principles of this system are drawn from the standards of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

• Benefits: Employees participate in a GHI and HIP plan modeled after the plan for NYC municipal employees, the UFT Welfare Fund, and the Teacher Retirement System, the city’s pension plan for teachers.

• Leaves of Absences: Employees can take up to a 10 month leave for childbirth and rearing, up to 200 days of which can be paid and up to 6 months with full benefits.  Other eligible leaves include military, jury duty, bereavement, and religious observance.

The ethos of the contract is one that places a premium on teacher voice and democracy in the workplace. It is rooted in the firm conviction that schools are successful when they recruit and retain the very best professional educators and give them the means to educate their students. In response to a question at the signing, Barr said that the existence of the just cause standard and due process were a strong “comparative advantage” for Green Dot in recruiting the best career educators who do not want to go into the “at will mosh pits” of some charter schools.

Here is the actual agreement [Green Dot Contract], and its appendices [Appendix A: Salaries; Appendix B: Teacher Evaluations; Appendix C: Staff Evaluations].

The UFT and New York City have reached a tentative agreement that will secure pension benefits and end the two days of work before Labor Day, while providing needed savings to the City. The actual agreement, which will be submitted to the Delegate Assembly for its approval, can be read here.

Under this agreement, the pension and health benefits of all UFT members — in service and retiree — remain completely intact. In particular, the agreement preserves the hard-won age 55 retirement pension. After completing ten years of service, future members will pay an additional contribution for these benefits. Effective September 2009, UFT members will no longer have to work the two days before the Labor Day weekend.

“This agreement is a win for everyone,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten. “We are all very concerned about the heavy losses our pension system has incurred during this economic crisis and the looming cuts for schools. No only does this deal help shore up the city budget with new savings, which will hopefully be used for schools, it also maintains the age 55 retirement benefit that we fought many years to achieve and returns us to the tradition of teachers and students starting school after Labor Day, something that our members, particularly those with families, very much wanted.”

The Context
As a result of the worst economic crisis in the United States since the Great Depression, public services – including public education – have been subjected to draconian budget cuts, public sector workers have been laid-off and public sector unions have come under pressure to diminish the salaries, health benefits and pension benefits of their members.

From the start of this economic crisis, the UFT has identified two primary objectives which have guided our response to this crisis: protecting the quality of the educational services provided to New York City public school children and securing the economic livelihood and professional status of our members.

The UFT has rightly rejected efforts to raise the retirement age of New York City public school educators and otherwise reduce their pension benefits – efforts that have grown in intensity since two large state public employee unions earlier this month negotiated agreements which included such measures.

The Agreement
Here are the details of the agreement:

• Pension and health benefits for all UFT members — in service, retiree and future — remain intact.
• All UFT members who have been required to report to begin work on the Thursday before Labor Day will report back to work the Tuesday after Labor Day, effective September 2009.
• The 55/25 and 55/27 early retirement benefits are preserved.
• All UFT members will continue to receive the 7% guaranteed annualized rate of return for the fixed investment option in the voluntary Tax-Deferred Annuity (TDA) programs for BERS and TRS members. The additional 1.25% rate above the state-guaranteed 7% will no longer be available, a modification that reflects the downturn in investment income after the stock market collapse last year.
• New UFT-represented employees will continue to have the same pension benefits as current members, but they will make additional contributions for these benefits — a return to the old Tier Four contribution rules. Breaking it down, under the 55/27 retirement plan, new employees will make a 4.85% pension contribution for 27 years and 1.85% thereafter, up from the current 4.85% contribution for 10 years and then 1.85% through 27 years.
• New UFT-represented employees will become vested in the pension plan after 10 years of service, rather than the current five. The impact of this change is modest since most UFT-represented educators can elect to withdraw their pension contributions as a lump-sum payment if they quit during their first 10 years on the job.
• New UFT-represented employees will be eligible for retiree health insurance coverage after 15 years instead of 10 years.

Read the actual agreement here.

[Editor’s note: Ms. Teach4Life is the pseudonym of a tenth-year teacher currently in her first year at a Manhattan middle school.]

At the end of each school year, I take time to reflect on the year and evaluate which components were successful, and which aspects may need to be tweaked. Over the last few years teaching ELA in a middle school in North Carolina, I have found five points to be among the best practices. Following these guidelines helped to make this year — my first year in a Manhattan middle school — a successful one.

Start with the students in mind, not the curriculum. The beginning of the school year starts with a whir, and it continues in that fast-paced manner for about a month. Then it is time for test prep, because January is right around the corner! It is easy to fall into the trap of teaching the curriculum and not the student. Don’t let yourself fall prey! I often spend the first week of school having the students complete interest inventories and personal interviews. I want to know about their families and cultures and who they are as individuals. Throughout the year I remain focused on building relationships outside of my classroom. I participate in student/staff ball games, sponsor clubs throughout the year, and try to attend any student activities I am invited to. This year I attended a dance recital, a karate championship, and a concert. Don’t underestimate the power of building meaningful relationships with your students.

Frequently contact the parents. It is important that you start the year off on the right foot when it comes to handling parents. I feel that building relationships with parents is often overlooked by teachers. It is invaluable. During the first few weeks of school, I make an effort to call every single parent (I usually teach 70-80 students.) and tell them something great their child is doing in my classroom. For the most part, I get the same reaction from the parents: they are shocked that I would call home to tell them such a nice piece of information! Believe me, that call builds a lot of creditability with you as the teacher. Three weeks before the first marking period ends, I send home a “caught you” coupon that specifically names something the student is doing well in ELA. The parent signs the coupon and it’s worth five points of extra credit.

Kids need to be heard. Let’s face it — sometimes kids just need someone to listen to them. In middle school, when all the hormones are raging and the students are changing so much in so many different ways, they just need someone to sit with them and be unbiased and nonjudgmental. They, like adults, want to feel loved and safe and validated. They want to feel important, and they need a sounding board at times. Many days, I have several students stopping by my room after school or during their lunch period, and they just really want to talk for a few minutes. I am committed to lending my ears to my students.

Develop your personal philosophy of education. Don’t develop it and cast it aside — hang it by your desk and refer to it on those days when you need to remind yourself why you entered into this career. It will give you strength, hope, and vision when the times are rough. My personal philosophy is about a page long; however, the premise of it is: Relationships + Relevance + Rigor = Results.

Plan meaningful lessons. Students need to understand that what they are learning is important. They must be able to relate it to their lives, and they must be engaged in activities within the classroom to ensure that the content sticks with them. I think of each student in my classroom climbing on a ladder: you have to start by meeting them on the rung they are most comfortable standing. In other words, start by meeting your students where they are, and be sure to incorporate their personal experiences and interests into your lessons. As the year progresses, your students will climb that ladder and the sky will be the limit!

By Diane Krauthamer

On Wednesday, June 17, members of the New York City IWW protested against the callous layoffs at Havas’ Media Planning Group (MPG), a multimillion dollar media agency whose clients include some of the largest corporations in the world.

MPG recently cut 11 percent of its staff, primarily at its headquarters in New York. But the media giant did not anticipate that one of its former employees, Joseph Sanchez, would publicize their anti-worker practices.

“This extremely profitable corporation laid me off just to put extra money in their pockets,” said Sanchez, who worked in the client accounting department. “Instead of making a living wage, I’m surviving off unemployment benefits and food stamps.”

read more

Authoritarian regimes that don’t like democratic elections have a similar antipathy for free, democratic trade unions. Iran has a number of its leading trade unionists in jail, and has arrested a number more in its attempts to stop the protests against the recent stolen election. Amnesty International has begun a campaign for their freedom. June 26, Global Solidarity Action Day, will be dedicated to Justice For Iranian Workers.

UFT President Randi Weingarten will appear on NY1’s “Road to City Hall” tonight, June 18, at 7 p.m., with a reprise at 10 p.m. She will be discussing the city and state budget, the New York State Senate, mayoral control and other topics. Be sure to tune in!

NY1 News is Time Warner Cable’s 24-hour news channel in New York City.

[Editor's note: This is the same survey we linked to on May 29.]

New York City teachers of grades 3 to 8, who have had experience with the ELA and math tests, are invited to take an independent survey about the city’s testing program. The topics covered include test preparation, testing and scoring procedures, and the significance of the results. It takes about 20 minutes to complete.

If you choose to participate, be sure to answer all of the questions before you click the “Done” button.

This independent survey is trying to reach as representative a sample of teachers as possible. Please urge other teachers in your school to participate. To take the survey, click this link:

» Teacher Survey on New York City Public School Testing

[Teacher Man is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher at an intermediate school in Brooklyn.]

The end of the school year is always a bit chaotic for students and teachers alike. The numerous activities going on at school, from graduation to end of year parties and trips, keep everyone busy and the sunshine outside begins to draw all eyes to the windows as summer makes its grand entrance. It is also a time for reflection on both the year that has passed and that which is yet to come. Eighth graders are gearing up for the new challenges of high school, high school graduates are preparing for higher education and their future careers, and teachers are already beginning to think about their unit and lesson planning for the next year.

For me, this time of year is more reflective than ever. I am just now completing my second year in the New York City school system, which is also the culmination of my training as a New York City Teaching Fellow. I graduated from Hunter College with my MA in Teaching English as a Second Language last week, and I am on my way to becoming a fully certified and appointed teacher. I have learned so much in the last two years that it’s almost difficult to remember how I felt walking into my first classroom two summers ago not really knowing much about my profession. The experience has been life changing, to say the least, but also more enriching and humanizing than I ever could have imagined.

My story really begins in the spring of 2007, when I went from being a dissatisfied corporate employee at a luxury goods company to an aspiring teacher. I decided at 25 that the corporate world was just not a fulfilling place for me, and applied to the Teaching Fellows program. That summer I began student teaching, and come September I found myself in a classroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn with two very boisterous groups of seventh and eighth grade Haitian students who really enjoyed mocking my continental French accent, and rejoiced at my attempts to speak Haitian Creole. While that first year was challenging, and I would ultimately end up leaving the school because of a lack of school leadership, my students taught me so much about who I am, and why I chose to do what I am doing. To bring smiles to students’ faces, to help them understand a concept from multiple perspectives, to give them a broader vision of the world they live in and to unlock the possibilities that exist for them, these are the rewards that help us teachers get through those really tough days when everything seems to go wrong.

This year, I started teaching at my second school, a middle school in East Williamsburg. The difference has been like night and day. Here, there is great school leadership, a clear vision for student achievement, a staff that collaborates and works together. I think a big reason for this school’s success is both the dedicated staff and a principal who taught in the building for many years before taking the helm. Teaching in a school that was failing my first year, and then coming to a school that is thriving, while still dealing with the challenges faced by urban schools, has given me a unique perspective on why some schools work and others do not.

As I reflect on my own pedagogy, and revel in how far it has come after two years of on the job experience and master’s coursework, I am also drawn into the national debate on education reform with the same focus on reflection. What needs to be done to fix this country’s education system, or even just this city’s? Of course, there is no easy answer to this question, but clearly partisan differences must get put aside so that we can find new solutions. If there is one thing I have learned as a new teacher, it is the power of collaboration and the value of veteran teachers who can truly help new teachers to find their footing. But even veteran teachers must keep themselves open to new ideas in an ever changing field such as ours. Change is inevitable, and resisting it so rigidly can only do harm. As reflective practitioners, we must stay on top of new research and methods, while building on the success we have had with the tried and the true. Moving forward, I will always glance back, but I will keep my eyes locked on a brighter future for the children of our city.

Today’s New York Times has an interesting feature article on teachers fired from New York City public schools during the 1950s for being real and suspected Communists. Be sure to also take a look at the slideshow on the topic.

It’s clearly time to open up the municipal archives on this subject to researchers, so that there can be a full historical accounting of this period.

For the first time since 1997, the federal education department has assessed U.S. students in the arts. There are no individual or even state results, but there are some important findings. Again, the feds tested a nationally-representative sample of 8th graders. And, while the results are depressing in some ways, the fact that the government goes to the trouble of testing for basic student literacy in music and visual art, and has ways to test for that, is encouraging enough, especially in our math- and ELA-centric world.

How do they actually test a national sample of children for musical ability? Students aren’t asked to compose symphonies, or even play an instrument. But they are asked to listed to music and answer questions, and they are asked to write some basic rhythmic annotation.

A sample question in music: the students listen to the beginning of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” two times and then are asked to identify the solo instrument. Another question plays, and presents in notation, two measures of a basic rhythm in 4/4 time, and then asks students to write two more measures of notes to complete the pattern.

How did U.S. 8th graders do on these questions? Half the students said, correctly, that the opening trill and 3-octave slide of “Rhapsody in Blue” is played on a clarinet. Another 22 percent thought it was a sax, 15 percent guessed oboe and 12 percent said it was a flute. Not bad. But evidently fewer children are taught notation. On the second question, just one-fifth of students got “developed,” the top score, by composing two additional measures in correct 4/4 time. More than half (52 percent) scored the lowest, “inadequate”, meaning that they could not produce any combination of notes to equal four quarter notes correctly.

In one visual arts question, students were given two prints, a self-portrait by Kathe Kollwitz and self-portrait by Egon Schiele. Then they were asked to create their own self-portrait. Asked to identify a “technical similarity” between the two artists’ portraits, nearly half (46 percent) incorrectly answered that both works “rely on light and shadow to emphasize depth,” a quality that few portraits emphasize. Just 37 percent correctly said that the two were similar in combining “loose gestural lines with careful drawing.”

The self portraits were assessed on clarity of observation, use of “identifying detail,” the purposeful use of compositional elements, and how they used their materials, as well as proportion, color and line, and the individualization of the portrait.

"Sufficient" sample response

Fully 57 percent of tested 8th graders’ self portraits were assessed at the second-lowest of four possible scores, meaning “Efforts at specific observations are apparent, but relatively minimal. Compositional successes may seem more accidental than deliberate, and use of materials is unskilled. ” Another quarter of students received the next grade up, “uneven” while just 4 percent received “sufficient,” producing a detailed, individual and skillful self-portrait appropriate for a 13-year-old. Looks like a little more studio art in middle schools would be a good thing.

And in fact, it seems that students have lost ground in music since 1997 and stayed at the same rather low level in visual art. The results are not fully comparable, but to the extent they are, the overall music score on the multiple choice questions was down a statistically significant two points, from 53 percent correct in 1997 to 51 percent correct in 2008. On art multiple choice, students remained at an average 42 percent correct responses over both testing years.

Depressingly, black students scored about 30 points below whites on a 0-300 scale. Hispanics showed a similar gap in music though a slightly narrower gap in art. Predictable gaps persist between urban and suburban students, poor and non-poor, general education and special education students and ELLs vs. non-ELLs. Girls did significantly better than boys, though this gap may well close as these students get older. No such closures are predictable by race or poverty

Music and art can and should be taught to all students, not just the “interested” ones, is the lesson to take away from this assessment. Every educated person should be able to identify instruments, read notes, compare artistic techniques and (speaking as someone who really cannot) draw at least competently.

For these kinds of findings, and because it can point the way to improvement, the NAEP remains one of our best testing resources.